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CAUGHT BY THE TIDES

By Zhang-Ke JIA

NEW HORIZONS INT'L FILM FESTIVAL / NEW HORIZONS ASSOCIATION - as DISTR Theatrical, TV, DVD-video, VOD, POLAND / FEST

Romance - Completed 2024

Festivals
& Awards

Festival de Cannes 2024

Competition

Toronto - TIFF 2024

Special Presentations

Busan IFF 2024

Gala Presentation

New Horizons International Film Festival Poland 2024

Official Selection

- Year of production
- 2024
- Genres
- Romance, Drama
- Countries
- CHINA
- Languages
- MANDARIN
- Duration
- 111 mn
- Director(s)
- Zhang-Ke JIA
- Cast
- Zhao TAO
- Producer(s)
- Shôzô ICHIYAMA, Casper LIANG JIAYAN
- Synopsis
- Jia Zhang-ke returns to Cannes in premiere form. The Chinese master breaks with traditional narrative structure, presenting a phenomenal collage of songs, sounds, landscapes, and characteristic objects that reflect China's transformation over the past 21 years. The central theme is the turbulent relationship between Qiaoqiao (the director's muse, Zhao Tao) and Bin (Zhubin Li), a couple divided by priorities, economy, and distance. Jia Zhang-ke is as interested in lost and unfulfilled individuals as he is in the socio-economic processes that have irreversibly altered the Middle Kingdom. Jia begins his journey in 2001 in Shanxi Province, where he was born and made his first films, travels to the Three Gorges Dam depicted in Still Life, and ends up in the snowy north. He juggles references to his own work, openly dialogues with it, and once again indulges his fascination with popular music. Dialogue plays a minimal role as Jia uses more subtle means to convey the passage of time and the effects of modernization. Cinematographers Yu Lik-wai and Éric Gautier add aesthetic value, with their different types and textures of images symbolizing the transformation of the medium itself. Caught by the Tides thus becomes an erudite, meta-cinematic essay.